Just wanted to say that Mark, Michael and Stuart from FMI and Trevor from PWC did an excellent job engaging the classroom in discussion each day, and had a great program format for teaching. The information they brought forward was extremely useful now as I'm sure it will be throughout my career. This was only my 2nd IMPACT course that I have attended, I would like to commend IMPACT on organizing these events for Ironworkers and contractors alike, IMPACT always put on an amazing program, and does a very good job at making these events comfortable and welcoming to attend. I plan to attend more IMPACT events as the information is always very useful and IMPACT does a great job of finding the right instructors for the occasion. I would like to thank everyone at IMPACT for the work they do to set these events up and providing the opportunity to attend these courses.

Regards,

Jacob Wicks
Chief Estimator
JCT Metals Inc.

News

Most Americans view unions favorably, though few workers belong to one

08/31/2018

Most Americans like labor unions, at least in the abstract. A majority (55%) holds a favorable view of unions, versus 33% who hold an unfavorable view, according to a Pew Research Center survey from earlier this year. For most of the past three decades that the Center has asked that question, in fact, Americans have viewed unions at least somewhat more favorably than unfavorably.

Despite those fairly benign views, unionization rates in the United States have dwindled in recent decades (even though, in the past few years, the absolute number of union members has grown slightly). As of 2017, just 10.7% of all wage and salary workers were union members, matching the record low set in 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Back in 1983, when the BLS data series begins, about a fifth (20.1%) of wage and salary workers belonged to a union. (Unionization peaked in 1954 at 34.8% of all U.S. wage and salary workers, according to separate data from the Congressional Research Service.)

The long-term decline of organized labor has affected most parts of the U.S. economy, but not uniformly. In general, the biggest declines in unionization have come in those occupations and industries that were – and to a large extent still are – the foundations of the American labor movement, according to our analysis of BLS data going back to 2000.

Among the 22 broad occupational categories into which the BLS sorts U.S. wage and salary workers, the biggest decline in union membership from 2000 to 2017 was in transportation and material moving occupations, a broad grouping that includes everything from airline pilots and long-haul truckers to taxi drivers, train conductors and parking-lot attendants. In 2000, nearly 1.8 million of the 8.1 million workers in those occupations, or 21.7%, were union members. By last year, only 1.3 million transportation and material moving workers (14.8%) were unionized, even though total employment in the sector had grown to more than 8.8 million.